Cause and Effect Essays – the Key is Topic Refinement

If you have been assigned a cause and effect essay, there are one of two specifics to this assignment

Students have been given a general academic area from which they must choose to write cause and effect essay pieces. For example, suppose the topic is poverty in a sociology class. Students may then have options. Do they want to write an essay on the causes of poverty or the effects of poverty on neighborhoods or society as a whole? This is a huge topic area, and there certainly are lots of options.

Students have been given an assignment to write such an essay and must come up with their own cause and effect essay ideas. On the on hand, the wide open field of potential topics is nice, because you can choose a topic in which you have great interest; on the other hand, you will then have to figure out how you are going to refine your topic and determine whether you will deal with causes, effects, both, or the continual chain of causes and effects that invariably presents itself.

Begin By Understanding the Assignment

Ideas for cause and effect essays must still fall within the parameters of the assignment your instructor/professor has given. There are actually four possible refinements of the assignment:

Are you supposed to deal only with causes of something?

Are you supposed to deal only with the effects of and event or phenomenon?

Are you supposed to deal with both causes and effect?

Are you supposed to construct an essay that establishes a chain of cause and effect relationships? In other words, if a specific cause results in a specific effect, does that effect in turn become the cause of another effect? For example, among the ideas for a cause and effect essay might be that one on poverty in your sociology course. If you were going to look at the causes of poverty, you might include:

Lack of education

Lack of available jobs

So now you have the effect – poverty. Does poverty then become a cause for other effects? Yes, it does, and those might be:

Higher potential for criminal activity

Lack of educational and employment opportunities

Hunger and poor health care

And any one of these effects can be a cause of something else.

You see, then, that, no matter what kinds of great ideas for cause and effect essay topics you may have you must adhere to the specific assignment and you must refine your topic so that you do not end up with a never-ending chain of events that you cannot manage.

Organizing Your Thoughts For Writing

Successful essay writing of the cause and effect genre will require a good graphic organizer. Rather than the traditional outline, you may want to use another graphic that will better organize your thoughts. You may want to begin by listing the causes of something and then drawing an arrow to the effect(s); then, from that effect(s), which now becomes a cause of one or more effects, draw another arrow and list that effect(s). This graphic will get our thoughts in alignment, so that you can begin to construct what will be included in each paragraph of your essay. Going back to the topic of poverty, look at the causes that were refined – lack of education and lack of available jobs. Each of these things will probably demand a paragraph with factual information about the average education levels of those living in poverty (first paragraph) and then a transition to the second paragraph that will speak to lack of available jobs in areas of poverty throughout the country. You will then need a transitional paragraph which introduces the concept of poverty being the cause of the three effects that are listed above. Each of them, in turn, will require a paragraph.

The Introduction and Conclusion of a Cause and Effect Essay

Good college paper writing that deals with causes and effects includes the development of a thesis statement which will be included in your introduction. Ask yourself these questions: Why is poverty an important topic to address? What impact does poverty have on society as a whole? When you answer these questions, you will have a thesis for your essay. Your conclusion should refer back to your thesis. If you have decided that poverty is a huge drain on the financial and social well-being of a society, you must re-state that in a different way in your conclusion and then perhaps state a call to action, such as the development of programs, with financing, that will address education, health care and skill training in pockets of poverty throughout the country.

Time is a Factor For Sure

It takes time to produce a good cause and effect essay. There is research to be done; there is organization and planning; and, of course, the rough and final drafts to be written. If time is not “on your side,” get ahold of GrabMyEssay.com and arrange for a writer to create a perfect cause and effect essay for you. Supply the topic and the assignment details, and let a pro go to work!